Theatre Design & Technology - Oct 1967 - 48

I think it is high time for our academic community, our
foundations or whoever is in a position to help start scientific research and laboratory work as well as serious training
and publishing programs in this field. JuSt to show you that
I am not exaggerating, I would like to finish with a quotation
of a review of the Rockefeller Report, The Performing Arts:
Problems and Prospects, the review written by the president of USITI, Prof. Donald Swinney.
The facts of this survey reveal that the vast expansion of the live performing arts during the last 20
years has been almost exclusively amateur. Significant though the amateur theatre is in its contribution to our cultural development, the greatest responsibility for the highest level of artistic or creative achievement must logically rest with the professional artists and the organizations that support
them. If those who should offer the most fail to
meet this responsibility, we are doomed to the
mediocrity that would prevail if scientists and educators failed to meet the challenges of the times
and plan for the future. Failure is in fact evidelll in

that, of the 100 cultural centers that are in the
planning or building stages throughout the nation,
only about one-third are centers that can accommodate all the arts. To find the term "art center"
or "cultural center" applied to facilities so poorly
conceived that they prove to be Iittle more than
sports arenas or assembly halls reveals a lack of the
leadership and vision so necessary to artistic development.

1. For an approximation of some of the remarks by Lev
Zetlin we are fortunate to have his more general contribution, entitled "The Engineer's Third Millenium" in Progressive Architecture's December, 1966 issue (pp. 139-145),
which features an examination of the third Millenium.

THEATRE OUTSIDE THE THEATRES
C. RAY SMITH: Welcome to the last of our panel discussions, which meets here in the Forum Theatre of the Vivian
Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center. To tell us about this
most visionary al~d futuristic looking theatre-a theatre that
I feel is particularly appropriate to the avant-garde subject of
the panel to follow-I present the collaborating designer
who, along with the late architect Eero Saarinen, planned
and designed the Forum and the Beaumont above it, Jo
Mielziner.

A.AA.
Panelists:

WILL STEVEN ARMSTRONG, Designer;N. Y .C.
REV. ALVIN A. CARMINES, Judson Memorial Church; N.Y.C.
PASTOR WILLIAM GLENESK, Spencer Memorial Church; N.Y.C.
MICHAEL KIRBY, Saint Francis College,
sculptor. and author of Happenings I Dutton)
BilLY KLUVER, Scientist; Bell Laboratories,
Murray Hill, N.J.; President of E.A.T.
MING CHO LEE, Designer; N.Y.C.
W. OREN PARKER, University of Pittsburgh
EARL REIBACK, Designer-Engineer; N.Y.C.
P. ADAMS SITNEY, President, Film-Makers
Cinematheque
DON SNYDER, Designer-Projectionist; N.Y.C.
THOMAS WILFRED, Designer; West Nyack,
N.Y.

Moderator: NED A. BOWMAN, University of Pittsburgh
Time:

Saturday, June 3,2:00 P.M.

Place:

The Forum, Vivian BeaumontTheatre. Lincoln
Center, 150 W. 65 IEero Saarinen & Associates, Architects, with Jo Mielziner)
I.R. CODE: avant garde/happening

MIELZINER: Originally this was to have been a rehearsal
space allowing enough setting for a couple dozen people
and film projections for scenery. Gradually, this grew to an
area where performances could be made with scenery, costumes and lights. Then, we ran out of funds; so this is not
a completed room. The intention, eventually, was to have
a track, where you see those brown curtains, of extruded
metal; panels which closed in and could be transparent;
something like a sacellum in the back; and a booth up here
for projections, so that any scenery could be projected.
Outside the actors' vomitories, there would be regular exits,
and emergency exits as well for people. That was the idea,
and I hope it will be used for performances when the
owners have a chance to finish it.
C. RAY SMITH: Of all our interdisciplinary sessions during
this convention, none should be more attended to than this
last scene. We have given star billing to a vital movement
of theatrical enterprise that might threaten the theatre consultant, and even the established theatre itself.
What is happening outside the theatre-in films, discotheques, happenings, and in some churches-is not considered theatre by everybody. Doubtless, too many theatre people ignore, if not resist, this entire movement (as the reaction to some of Billy Kluver's remarks this morning indicated). But, ladies and gentlemen, if we want to build for
the theatre explosion-one that is unquestionably futuristic,
like this hall-we must be alert to and work with this "New
Theatre." It is represented this afternoon by spokesmen for

[]ill] THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

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